A Girl Like That(40)
I looked at the judges again to gauge their reactions. Instead of looking disinterested and bored, the male judges were listening closely to what I had to say. Our headmistress was smiling and nodding her head. Only Khan Madam looked pale and uneasy.
“Seema Rao in Mumbai did this in 2013. She hit her husband on the head with a cricket bat before he sliced into her with a knife. It was later discovered that her husband was mentally ill. With her quick actions, she managed to save herself and her husband. The judge assigned to the case found her actions justified even though under normal circumstances they would be illegal.”
Little witch, Masi had called me when she first smelled the cigarettes on me when I was in Class X. I could still remember the pinch of her nails, the burn of the hot spoon on my skin, her scream in my ear when I brought my foot down in retaliation, crushing her toes with the heel of my shoe. It was the only time I’d ever fought back physically. She had never tried that on me again.
“When we talk about violence, we do not always talk about death,” I said. “Sometimes violence can mean the difference between life and death. The difference between waiting for someone’s help and continuing to suffer abuse, and helping yourself when you most need it. Even the law recognizes this idea of self-preservation. In Seema Rao’s case, the Mumbai High Court judge defined it as the absolute right of human beings to protect themselves from harm—with violence, if necessary.”
I paused and looked around the quiet auditorium. “When I went through these cases for my research, I came across so many instances when the victim of the abuse said ‘I wish I’d done something.’ Or ‘I wish I hadn’t been so scared.’ And you know what? I wish they had as well. I wish they hadn’t been scared and that they had tried to fight back. Because maybe if they had, they would have found that the law was on their side.
“Thank you.”
I sat down next to my teammates again, my face flushed, my heart racing, the applause ringing in my ears. Alisha gripped my wrist. “You got the most claps so far! Khan Madam looked like she was about to cry. The opposition doesn’t stand a chance!”
But I wasn’t too sure. Over the years, I’d learned not to underestimate the tall girl who now stood from her chair and made her way to the podium.
Mishal mimicked my posture at the stand, placing her hands on both sides. “My partner has already discussed the moral issues pertaining to retaliating with violence in a violent situation. So I will not go into that. I will address the legal issues pertaining to the topic. Or self-defense, as Ms. Wadia calls it. Yet is self-defense so easy to prove in a court of law? The first question a lawyer will ask you is: Why not a divorce? The law allows a woman to escape the abuse of a violent spouse. We don’t live in the Middle Ages anymore. What is the need to retaliate with violence? Why risk a jail sentence or the loss of one’s children in a custody battle? Yes, the law may permit you to defend yourself—but the burden of proving yourself innocent in such scenarios may be much harder than the burden of being a divorced woman.”
My teammates scribbled furiously, some arguments about women having little to no choice in countries like Saudi Arabia, etc., etc., but I could already see that Mishal’s argument had changed things around, knitting everything that her team members had said earlier into something more structured, cohesive. They would be winning the team trophy, no matter what we said during rebuttals; I was quite sure of that.
Ten minutes later, after Mishal and I faced off again in one-minute comebacks, my prediction proved right.
“The winning team,” our headmistress announced, “is the Against team, led by Mishal Al-Abdulaziz!”
Alisha hung her head. “Who cares?” I whispered in her ear. “It’s a silly debate.”
A lie. I’d worked hard on this debate. Harder than anything I’d ever worked on in school.
“Now, choosing the best speaker was a bit difficult,” the headmistress continued when the applause died down. “There were two contenders—one from each team—both so good they could end up pursuing legal careers in the future.” She smiled. “But there is a winner. By one mark: Zarin Wadia from the For team! Mishal Al-Abdulaziz was a very close—”
Her voice was drowned by the applause that broke out for me, which was much louder than that for the winning team. The audience had spoken, and it was clear which side they’d supported. “We should’ve won,” my teammates whispered to one another, their voices full of angry triumph. “See?”
What I saw was the look on Mishal’s face. She was smiling, but it was a smile of disappointment and for a moment I felt sorry for her, having felt that same dejection seconds before, when my team lost. She was the only one onstage who didn’t congratulate me, but I didn’t realize that until much later, when I boarded the school bus to head back home. I looked at my reflection in the window—my eyes were brighter than usual and my face still held the afterglow of victory. I grinned to myself, teeth flashing bright, and for a second I wasn’t the Zarin Wadia everyone knew, but a girl, a normal schoolgirl who had won something and was proud of it.
Out of the corner of my eye, I grew aware of someone else watching me. I turned warily. It was a boy wearing sunglasses, leaning against the door of a black car, a BMW. His head was tilted sideways and he had a slight smile on his face. Under normal circumstances, I would have raised an eyebrow or even smiled back. But this was Farhan Rizvi. And he was openly checking me out. Heat rose to my cheeks and again, for the second time in my life, I wasn’t quite sure what I was supposed to do.